On January 16, 2019, the United States State Department announced the decision to suspend for only 45 days the application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, “to conduct a careful review… in light of the national interests of the United States and efforts to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba and include factors such as the Cuban regime’s brutal oppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms and its indefensible support for increasingly authoritarian and corrupt regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

The government of President Donald Trump threatens to take a new step that would dangerously reinforce the blockade against Cuba, flagrantly violate International Law, and directly attack the sovereignty and interests of third countries.

Cuba rejects this threat in the most energetic, firm and categorical way. It regards it as a hostile act of extreme arrogance and irresponsibility, while condemning the disrespectful and slanderous language of the State Department’s public message.

The Helms-Burton Act came into force in 1996. It was devised to codify and tighten the economic, commercial and financial blockade policy, officially imposed in 1962, with the aim of subverting and overthrowing the Cuban government, and imposing a regime to the liking of the United States government.

It consists of four titles and has been applied since its promulgation. It is characterized by its extreme extraterritorial scope, as it violates the norms and principles of International Law, contravenes the rules of international trade and economic relations, and is harmful to the sovereignty of other States, in particular through the application of its provisions against companies and people established in their territory.

It has been almost unanimously rejected by the international community in the United Nations, in specialized international organizations, and in regional organizations such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the African Union. Several countries have national laws to deal with the extraterritorial effects of this law.

Among the key objectives of the Helms-Burton Act is to hamper Cuba’s economic, commercial and financial relations with third countries, and undermine its ability to attract direct foreign capital investment for its development. Titles III and IV of the law are expressly devoted to this purpose.

Title III establishes the authorization for United States nationals to file suits before U.S. courts against any alien who “traffics” U.S. property that was nationalized in Cuba in the 1960s, in a legitimate process, as recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States, carried out by the Cuban government in full compliance with national law and International Law.

Among the most significant aberrations, this title extends this authorization to owners who were not citizens of the United States at the time of the nationalizations, and whose alleged possessions no one has certified.

Under the provisions of the Helms-Burton Act itself, all U.S. Presidents since 1996, including Trump in 2017 and 2018, have made consecutive use of executive power to suspend the application of Title III every six months, recognizing that it consists of the grossest and most unacceptable aspect of this law, contrary to International Law and the sovereignty of other States. Also understanding that its application would pose insurmountable obstacles for any prospect of settling claims and compensation for legitimate U.S. owners.

For its part, the People’s Provincial Court of Havana, on November 2, 1999, upheld the lawsuit filed against the United States Government for Human Damages, and sentenced it to pay reparations and compensate the Cuban people to the amount of $181.100 billion dollars and, on May 5, 2000, also for Economic Damages caused to Cuba, and sentenced it to pay $121 billion dollars.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reiterated Cuba’s willingness to find a solution to the mutual claims and compensations.

This decision that the United States government threatens to adopt would imply that, contrary to what is established in International Law and the practice of international relations, foreign individuals and entities with legitimate businesses in Cuba may face the threat of unfounded and illegitimate claims before courts of the United States. The politically motivated and venal behavior of certain courts in Florida, frequently used as a weapon against Cuba, is well known.

For our people, it means once again resolutely, consciously and forcefully confronting the insistence of U.S. imperialism to subjugate the destiny of the Cuban nation to its dominion and tutelage.

If Title III is applied as established by this law and as the announcement of the Department of State threatens, any Cuban and every community in the country will see claims brought before United States courts for ownership of the housing they occupy, their workplace, the schools their children attend, the polyclinics where they receive medical attention, the land on which their neighborhoods are built; and they will be able to observe the aim of usurping the country’s wealth, infrastructure, arable land, industries, mining resources, energy potential, and the foundations on which science and technology are developed and services provided to the population.

We should all recall the aberrant contents of the Plan Bush that describes and sets out in detail how Cuban families and the country would be deprived of practically everything.

For more than twenty years, the Helms-Burton Act has guided the interventionist efforts of anti-Cuban sectors in the United States to attack the Cuban nation and undermine its sovereignty. By virtue of its application, hundreds of millions of dollars have been approved to subvert the domestic order in Cuba, and innumerable measures have been put in place to try to provoke regime change. Its economic impact has implied a high cost for the country’s development efforts and for the welfare of the population, with a humanitarian impact that is no greater thanks to the social justice system that prevails in Cuba.

The intention to fully apply Title III is promoted against the criteria of major U.S. government agencies, and as a consequence of the power and influence on the government of people whose political careers have been marked by impotent resentment against Cuba, and based on the use of lies and blackmail.

The majority of the United States public consistently opposes the economic blockade, as recognized by the most respected surveys.

History records with sufficient clarity that the policy of economic blockade and the bilateral problems between Cuba and the United States do not have their origin in the just nationalizations that, according to the law and with legitimate rights, were carried out by the revolutionary government. The military, economic and terrorist attacks of the United States government against Cuba began before the fundamental nationalization acts of U.S. properties took place.

It is well-known that all nationalizations of foreign property, including that of the U.S., were provided by law with a commitment to compensation, which the U.S. government refused even to discuss, while it was adopted by the governments of claimants of other countries, all of which enjoyed due compensation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterates the postulates of the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty Act (Law No. 80), and emphasizes that the Helms-Burton Act is unlawful, unenforceable, void and without legal effect. Consequently, it will consider null all claims based on it by individuals or legal entities, whatever their citizenship or nationality.

The government of Cuba reserves the right to duly respond to this new aggression.

US President Donald Trump has canceled his planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, citing the ongoing impasse with congressional Democrats that’s keeping parts of the US government closed for a third week.

Trump, who is visiting the US-Mexico border on Thursday, tweeted from Texas that he will be “respectfully canceling” the Davos trip because of the “Democrats intransigence on border security.”

@realDonaldTrump Because of the Democrats intransigence on Border Security and the great importance of Safety for our Nation, I am respectfully cancelling my very important trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. My warmest regards and apologies to the @WEF!

The Davos conference is scheduled to start on January 22, so Trump’s announcement means the current government shutdown may continue to that date and beyond.

The US government has been partially shut down for 20 days now, after Senate Democrats refused to back a Republican-majority House bill that would allocate $5.7 billion to building the border wall just before Christmas.

Democrats took over the House on January 3, and have proposed several bills to reopen the government, but have rejected any funding for the wall, ever, calling it “immoral.”

Trump walked out of a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) on Wednesday, calling it a “waste of time” because the Democrats were not willing to negotiate.

Some 800,000 federal workers will soon miss their expected paychecks, and each side has accused the other of ignoring their needs and interests.

A cyberattack caused major printing and delivery disruptions on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times and other major US newspapers, including ones owned by Tribune Publishing Co such as the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.

The cyberattack appeared to originate outside the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a source with knowledge of the situation.

The attack led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of The Times, Tribune, Sun and other newspapers that share a production platform in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Tribune Publishing, whose newspapers also include the New York Daily News and Orlando Sentinel, said it first detected the malware on Friday.

The West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times were hit as they are also printed on the shared production platform, the Los Angeles Times said.

Tribune Publishing spokeswoman Marisa Kollias said the virus hurt back-office systems used to publish and produce "newspapers across our properties."

"There is no evidence that customer credit card information or personally identifiable information has been compromised," Kollias said in a statement

The Wall Street Journal and New York Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Most San Diego Union-Tribune subscribers were without a newspaper on Saturday as the virus infected the company's business systems and hobbled its ability to publish, the paper's editor and publisher Jeff Light wrote on its website.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said it was studying the situation.

"We are aware of reports of a potential cyber incident affecting several news outlets, and are working with our government and industry partners to better understand the situation," said DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman in a statement.

Representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were not immediately available for comment.

A Times' article portraying Chechen jihadists as freedom fighters because they are anti-Russian is an attempt to whitewash a connection between the Ukrainian government and terrorist groups, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT.

The British newspaper published a highly controversial interview with a Chechen who is fighting against anti-government forces in Eastern Ukraine. The head of his battalion earlier admitted that his fighters waged jihad in Syria and that the leader was even part of a terror group committing atrocities in Russia.

"Some of the battalion's gunmen admit to having honed their combat skills at Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) training camps in Iraq and Syria," the article says.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras, commenting on the timing of the article to RT, said that the editorial decision to let this information out now is perhaps because "somebody just discovered the significance of it" especially in light of President Trump's announcement to withdraw US troops from Syria after Islamic State's defeat.

He said that it has been known since 2014 that there are "Chechen fighters on the Kiev government side".

"This has been a magnet for anti-Russian elements from all sorts of countries, Georgia and from Europe, people fighting with these non-governmental militias that are allied with the Ukrainian forces. And some of them are very extreme, very radical ideologically. This should come as no surprise that somebody admits that they have this relationship with ISIS," he said.

The British establishment, including the media and intelligent services, have been at the forefront of the anti-Russian campaign even before the 2016 US presidential election, according to Jatras. "They even had this entire group that was set up within the British government to generate anti-Russian press material."

The point of this "disinformation against Russia", he said, is "not only to blacken Russia but to make sure there could be no rapprochement between Moscow and Washington as Donald Trump has said he wants to have. And this effort has been wildly successful."

"Portraying these Chechen jihadists as 'freedom fighters', because they are anti-Russian wouldn't be necessarily unusual for the British media and you would expect that," Jatras said.

In his view, "the real tit-bit was the fact that somebody overlooked the significance of these fellows admitting that they have this relationship with the Islamic State which supposedly is the big enemy that we have been fighting against in Syria… But nothing could be farther from the truth."

Jatras suggested that the US' real reason for being in Syria is "to try to get rid of the Assad government and also to block the Iranians and to thwart the Russian effort in that country."

He said that IS "at best has been a kind of 'frenemy' that we treated as an enemy sometimes but also find it useful for larger political goals there."

He thinks this story isn't "all that surprising given the bent of the British media."

Jatras believes the article to be an intentional attempt to whitewash the connection between the Ukrainian government and terrorist groups "while knowing that they are cooperating with the Ukrainian government."

The government in Kiev is chaotic, weak and "at the mercy of the extreme nationalist elements," the former diplomat said.

"Of course they can't control these groups like Azov battalion and others on the field. It shouldn't be surprising that when they invite other radical groups to participate in the war that are nominally not part of the official Ukrainian forces, they also cooperate with them while allowing them to continue on an independent basis. I don't see how that morally whitewashes or isolates the Ukrainian authorities from the radical politics of these terrorists," Jatras noted.

In Jatras' opinion, these jihadists have been the biggest threat to the Western world for the last couple of decades, however, the UK and the US government don't look at this that way.

"They look at these groups as useful. And this has a long history, not only going back to the efforts against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but to Bosnia, to Kosovo, to Libya, to Syria… The idea that we don't have this long relationship with these groups is extremely naive," Jatras said.

"How many people put two and two together and say 'wait a minute, this doesn't smell right.' Why is our government, why is the British government, which is a close ally of the US, working with these terrorist groups? I thought we were against terrorism. And I think it is very hard for a lot of people to look at this and say 'wait a minute, maybe we are not as against the terrorists as we pretend to be?'"

During the Bolivarian Congress of Peoples held in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the president urged the "national union to defend peace and independence, defend the right to life, the happiness of the people."

President Maduro also warned about serious events that could occur in Venezuela, "from now on I say people unite and go to the streets, regain power and make a more radical Revolution, it is an order to the people."

"The People's Congress has three tasks for 2019: defeat the imperialists, oligarchs and traitors to achieve peace, fight for economic recovery, growth and prosperity of Venezuela, and face indolence, bureaucracy and corruption."

The Venezuelan executive power asked the Venezuelan people and the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) to "be prepared for everything, to defend and guarantee the peace of the country under any circumstances," adding that more than 80 percent of Venezuelans repudiate any foreign intervention.

The head of state reiterated that they do not want President Iván Duque getting involved in the affairs of his country. "(Ivan Duque) can not govern Colombia and wanting to govern Venezuela." Maduro added that either "they are with the foreign cause against Venezuela or they are with the Bolivarian Government that I preside, that the whole world is defined, we are with the country or with the war empire," the president said.

He also said that the Brazilian vice president-elect, Hamilton Mourao, said that in Venezuela there will be a coup d'état and, subsequently, the Brazilian government would send an army to prevail in that nation. "Here I am waiting for you with several million men and women, and with a FANB ready to defend the Constitution, independence and the Revolution, Mourao I'm waiting for you here," told Maduro to Murao.

Washington: US President Donald Trump has expressed concern that he could be impeached when Democrats take over the House and saw it as a "real possibility", a source close to him told CNN.

But Trump isn't certain it would happen, the source said on Monday night.

A separate source close to the White House told CNN that aides inside the West Wing believe "the only issue that may stick" in the impeachment process is the campaign finance violations tied to the President's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen's payouts to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, both women have alleged to have affairs with Trump.

Impeachment talk has ratcheted up in recent days following a blockbuster filing from prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

In the filing, prosecutors directly alleged for the first time that Cohen was being directed by Trump when he broke the law during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Democrats were suggesting that Trump committed an impeachable offence and could be sent to prison when his term in the White House is over.

The incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jerry Nadler, said on Sunday the allegations, if proven, would constitute "impeachable offences".

Democratic Senato Chris Coons said earlier on Monday that Trump could be indicted after he leaves office.

White House officials, at the moment, still do not believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion will result in impeachment.

The deployment did not go unnoticed by the White House as Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state took a jab at both nations labeling them “corrupt” and accused them of allegedly making their people “suffer.”

The Kremlin responded to what it believes are "inappropriate" and "non-diplomatic" comments by Pompeo.

The U.S. secretary of state's comments were issued in the framework of a Russia-Venezuela joint cooperation which does not accommodate U.S. interests, and which were not made in consultation with the North American Nation, and puts its hegemony over the region in suspense.

“Two TU-160 bombers, an An-124 heavy military transport plane and an II-62 long-haul plane of the Russian aerospace forces that took off from aerodromes in Russia have landed at the Maiquet at ‘Simon Bolivar’ International Airport of the Venezuelan capital city,” according to Russia’s defense ministry.

The Russian servicemen were met by the honor guard of Venezuela’s air force. They discussed “combined operational flights.”

“We are getting prepared to defend Venezuela if it is needed,” and “we will do it with our friends who advocate respect-based relations between states,” stated Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, after the landing.

The operational flights to be held between both nations are considered to be a “demonstration of strength,” by Venezuela’s defense ministry.

“Military-technical cooperation is one of many areas of our cooperation. Over the past years it has been developing very fruitful,” stated Vladimir Zaemsky, Russia’s ambassador to Venezuela, Tuesday.

The deployment of the Russian warplanes follows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to Russia last week.

A new Russia-Venezuela meeting is being prepared to discuss new joint projects, “These projects will provide great assistance in developing mutually beneficial relations between Russia and Venezuela,” stated Zaemsky.

The TU-160 bomber is the largest supersonic (Mach 2+) combat aircraft in the world and it was designed by the Soviet Union. The vessel is capable of carrying nuclear as well as conventional missiles. The bomber is considered to be “long-range” as it can cover distances of more than 12,000 km without having to refuel.

Categories

In Sancti Spiritus People also Shouted ´I am Fidel´

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Cubasí.cu interviewed translator Aracelia del Valle from Escambray website on people’s reaction for the journey of the caravan carrying the remains of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro to Santiago de Cuba.